OT: Rob Pelinka

Well, he just won the power struggle with Magic so I don’t think he’s going anywhere. 

He is looking to transition out to spend more time being Robert Downey Jr’s stunt double. 

Announcers joked that he and James Voskiul’s GPA’s were higher than their PPG. I think Beilein would have gotten him into double figures. 

I don’t think the Lakers mess is his doing. I’m looking at Tragic and Ms. Buss. 

He’s a guy who has never worked on an NBA team in any capacity and jumped in as the GM of arguably the most high profile team in NBA history.  The results have been pretty awful but then again they were awful before he got there.

Still, the fact remains he has been general manager for two years and has very little to show for it.  The most notable thing he’s done is be the GM for the first Lebrun James team since 2005 not to make the playoffs.

It's probably LeBron James's fault.

I blame LaVar Ball.

It's not his fault.  The fault belongs to Magic Johnson and that old playmate.

The Lakers problem is the late Dr Buss was a great owner. And like any business where the kids take over, it can go downhill. Pelinka is Kobe Bryant’s friend. So the power struggle is between the Magic faction, the Kobe faction and the LeBron faction. Pelinka seems shrewd, but has many enemies. I don’t think you can succeed with that much dysfunction. It reminds me of UM with Rich Rod. 

Two people to blame (three, if you count Jeannie Buss): Magic Johnson and Lebron. LBJ is a control freak (though he is a great humanitarian off) who ruins rosters he is on. Johnson thought simply getting LBJ would jolt the Lakers to relevancy, but he is a big quitter as an admin. 

Pelinka? Give him a year to see what he can do—and if he does not impress with his moves, then cut bait. 

Soo.......

There's a lot to unpack here.  I'll refrain from supporting links because I'm lazy, but they're easily googled if you have 5 minutes.  Also, this is just one person's editorializing.

Yes, there is a lot of scuttlebutt alluding to how Pelinka isn't super popular around the league.  There've been lots of leaks from sources saying this and that, and there probably is a kernel of truth there.  (One particular anecdote is Larry Nance asking Pelinka if he should buy a house in LA (i.e., am I going to get traded) and Pelinka saying 'sure, go ahead', only for Nance to find himself being traded to Cleveland.)

Pelinka was a very successful agent prior to becoming a GM, and agents tend to be at odds with NBA front offices.  (Which isn't to see agents can't become good GMs - Golden State's GM was a former agent)  But Pelinka might be a different animal - he was infamously Carlos Boozer's agent when Boozer signed with the Cavs and reneged to sign instead with the Jazz, which was (as you can imagine) not very well-received.  You can't really argue, though, that he wasn't a top-tier agent seeing as how Kobe and Harden were both loyal clients.

I personally think his record as a Laker GM isn't ALL bad - they made enough good moves to clear cap space and shed the albatross Mozgov-Deng contracts and regardless of whether LeBron was already hellbent on going to the Lakers, the team put themselves in a position to meet him halfway and getting the best player of this generation is a win, no matter how you slice it.  But, you are what your record says you are, and this season was... yeah. 

It's pretty clear that the front office wasn't on the same page.  And there's no shortage of blame to parse out.  In no particular order:

- Magic didn't have what it takes and thought he could coast by on Being Magic Johnson.  His off-the-chart basketball IQ didn't translate into talent evaluation or roster construction, much in the same way that Michael Jordan's unshakeable will to win didn't translate into a similarly-minded Wizards, er... Hornets roster.  And when even Magic realized that, he flounced out of his POBO (president of basketball operations) in a characteristically impulsive and short-sighted manner, leaving the rest of the front office in an unenviable position of having to pick up the pieces.  You can't say he doesn't still have the ability to surprise you with no-look passes, smdh.

- Jeanie Buss is, by all accounts, well-liked around the league and smart.  Smart enough to realize that she doesn't know the basketball side of things, so she sticks to the business/financial side where the Lakers have continued to flourish even in spite of being in the lottery for much of this decade.  The problem with Jeanie is that, for all of her lifetime, when the Lakers were being run by her father, they were - as much as a top-10 most valuable sports franchise can be - a family-style organization.  This has led her to be incredibly myopic in terms of who her inner circle is. and who she takes council from.  Magic is(was?) part of that circle, Linda Rambis (wife of former Laker Kurt Rambis) and a close friend of Jeanie is part of that circle, and Pelinka at least has half a foot in said Circle of Trust by dint of his long professional relationship with Kobe.  The obvious downside is that she hasn't sought input from the forward-thinking front office executives who've made the NBA a very different league from the last time the Lakers were good.

- Luke Walton is a OK coach, but was thrown under the buss because someone had to take the fall for this disappointing season.  I don't think he was the main problem (far from it), but he wasn't a good enough coach to keep on, so I was ultimately agnostic as to whether he stayed or went.  Yesterday, he went.  I'm fine with that.

This leaves Pelinka.  

At this point all signs point to Pelinka consolidating his power within the Laker organization, especially in the absence of Luke Walton and Magic Johnson.  When Ramona Shelburne (longtime Laker beat writer for ESPN who is VERY close to Jeanie Buss) is tweeting that there's more smoke than fire to some of the allegations, that points to Pelinka not getting purged.  Nonetheless, even if that's true, the fact that people are leaking unflattering stories about Pelinka do point to some sources within the organization not really liking him all that much.  And even if those are "fake news" (Jeanie and everyone else really needs to stop using that term), the fact that they're being floated at all is a red flag unto itself.  As a matter of course, it's not great if half your organization dislikes your general manager.

Right now, Pelinka is probably going to entrench his role as general manager, if only because SOMEONE has to do the job.  He was probably already doing much of Magic's job as well, since people close to the organization have hinted that Magic was mostly there as a public face and not working full-time as Laker POBO the way an actual POBO would've done. If Jeanie decides to bring in an outside voice, that person will evaluate whether Pelinka is worth keeping.  Until then, we Laker fans will be glumly eating popcorn in anticipation for how many hi-profile free agents decline meetings with us come July 1st.

Phew.  I need a drink, and I don't even drink.

The Athletic has put out some great backstory journalism on the Lakers' implosion. I'd recommend starting there.

But if you don't want to pay for a subscription, I can tell you that Pelinka is pretty much only a figurehead GM. He has a decent relationship with Jeannie Buss, which keeps him around, but Magic constructed that dumpster fire of a roster, and LeBron holds all the power, as per usual.

Look for Monty Williams to be named coach early next week.

Unfortunately for the Lakers, they will not get any of the premier free agents this summer, so it's probably the lottery for them again next year.

TrueHoop posted an excellent long article  on the various ways the Lakers have been mismanaged for years. Great read. 

https://www.truehoop.com/p/were-the-lakers-ever-really-magic